Cadena, who attended Central Catholic and Lee High schools, joined the Navy at 17, learning a trade that made it possible for him to live and work all over the world.

Afterward, Cadena worked as an electrician for Swearingen and then moved on to Lockheed Martin, where he worked as an engineering representative for 30 years in places such as Peru, Canada, Mexico and Germany.

When he retired at 55, he attained a goal he'd established long before — to be free to “do the things he wanted to do,” wife Janie Cadena said. But Tony Cadena's retirement turned out to be busier than many people's careers.

After he and his wife made a final move from Bethesda, Md., to San Antonio, Cadena immediately started volunteering with the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. “He'd always wanted to do that,” his wife said. “I think he'd always wanted to be a cowboy.”

But coming from a family of educators, Cadena gave his heart and soul to his work with the Somerset ISD foundation.

“This was his baby; they couldn't have asked a better person,” Janie Cadena said, recalling the nights he spent researching fundraising and other issues for the project.

The foundation, like similar groups in other school districts, was established to raise money for teaching programs not covered by public funds and for scholarships.

Omar Pachecano, president of the Somerset board of trustees, said Cadena was a generous, personable man who had the skills necessary for a new organization. “He gave it the thrust we needed to have and the leadership we needed to have.”

Education was important to Cadena, and he wanted to do what he could to help improve student achievement, said Robert A. Casias, who succeeded Cadena as president of the foundation.

His children could back that up.

“He definitely stressed education,” daughter Toni Jackson said. “For us, college was the next step like high school is from junior high school. From high school you go to college.”